Ongoing Battles

"Linjian, lead us." Yang Xin's tone was deadly serious and allowed for no disagreements. Although she had the highest cultivation out of the five of them and headed Ning'Er's recently established Shadow Organisation, her sharp mind realised that Linjian would have received the most training, as the sole successor for the Divine Family, in directing group combat.

There was no confusion in Linjian's only remaining eye as he looked grimly at the Snow Wind Great Ape in front of them with a raging fire growing in his heart.

'How dare you come and attack my city? How dare you kill my comrades and countrymen?' A cold fury simmered until the surface of his determined expression.

"Duan Jian, you have the toughest role and will have to face the enemy directly from the front. Du Ze, from the right and myself from the left. We have to find a way to keep it off balance and not let it escape our encirclement."

"Ziyun, ranged support and keep targeting its eyes so that even if you can't break through its defences, the ape will have to keep one arm up at all times to defend its most vulnerable area. Yang Xin, ranged attack and try to find every blind spot to shock him with your lightning attacks."

"Everyone, our cultivation is far too low compared to it. We have no chance except for if we can keep it off balance and target its vitals at any opportunity with our strongest attacks. Even Duan Jian's freakish defence won't hold out long under a Legend Ranked beast. For Glory City!!"

"For Glory City!!!" the other four screamed in response as they rushed to their positions. Without needing to be told, they had already started merging with their demon spirits.

The intelligent ape's eyes narrowed as he finally sensed a tiny trace of danger upon their transformation, especially from the Red Fury Dragon and the Thunder Bird. As far as it knew, there hadn't been a single demon spiritualist in this world who possessed the demon spirit of a true dragon, and it couldn't even recognise what kind of beast Yang Xin had merged with!

Duan Jian roared with focused rage as his dragon blood coursed through his body, primed for intense battle. The demon spirit Ning'Er had found him synergised perfectly with his draconic constitution and the defensive capabilities of his fiery red scales had reached an immeasurable level of hardness. Without any deceptive maneuvers, he directly slammed his shoulder against the body of the Snow Wind Great Ape.

A second later, the savage claws of the Divine Wind Lion king slashed down on the right arm of their enemy, while the Scarlet Flame Bear unceremoniously used both of its huge paws to hang on the left arm. The ape sneered in anger at the three pests in front of it and was about to send them flying away when it suddenly perceived something. It instantaneously closed its eyes and twisted it head sideways as five razor sharp feathers from Ziyun's Giant Winged Roc pierced into the side of its face.

Although the feathers all directly hit, it could merely penetrate barely an inch into the ape's face because of its quick reactions. It roared with uncontrollable anger that some weak insects could cause it such irritation, but as it reopened its eyes, a ball of purple lightning slammed right into its wide-open mouth right at that exact moment.

The Thunder Bird had finally taken action, waiting for the opportune time to strike.

The ape felt an excruciating explosion in its mouth, and parts of its tongue, inner cheeks and throat sliced open from the insidious, writhing energy. At this point, it suddenly took a defensive posture, hunching down and peeking through the arms in front of its face, before explosively jumping up towards the top of an empty wall nearby. It stood there with an evil glare in its eyes as it carefully observed the five enemies in front that it had dismissed as relatively harmless.

Without its eyes leaving the prey that it would now find ways to torture and destroy in the most painful way, it turned its mouth to side and spat out a significant amount of blood. Its Legend Ranked cultivation was already slowly sealing the damage that had been inflicted inside its mouth.

The team nervously glanced at each other knowing that the ape would not underestimate them again. The real fight would start now.

…..

Ning'Er kept her awareness on the Abyss Bear but momentarily shifted her gaze to the battle in the distance between five of her closest friends and the Snow Wind Great Ape. She frowned as she realised once again that she could not take her time to strategically wear down her enemy. The danger to her friends was just too great for her to risk.

What she didn't mind risking, was herself. Her eyes narrowed in determined resolution.

"Ancestor, let's take it down!" Through the mental link formed through the sword, Founder Ye Yan could sense the deep conviction in her heart to quickly destroy her enemy.

"Whatever you have planned, I'm with you all the way, Ning'Er!" he encouraged emphatically.

Various items appeared in her hands, called out from her interspatial ring. She was going to pull out every trick in the book this time.

Without any warning, she threw out three smoke bombs at the feet of her enemy, and she could see that it was already in a guard position, with knees bent and both arms crossed in front of its face.

In the next instant, the sound of a million crickets chirping began to fill the air and the demon beast tensed in readiness as a flashing shadow rushed in from the side. The Abyss Bear suddenly smirked deviously as it twisted its body and grabbed the incoming girl in its massive paws.

Although the powerful beast wasn't fast enough to catch her if she ran around outside its range, its formidable Legend Ranked perception could still intercept her if she came closer. It had purposely withheld part of its speed in the earlier part of the battle to deceive its agile foe.

Ning'Er's eyes widened in shock for a moment before the incredibly large jaws of the Abyss Bear clamped down on her entire head and tore it off from the rest of her body. At the instant that its jaws smashed down on the weak human body in its arms, the demon beast realised that something was wrong.

It roared with unrestrained savagery and reflexively turned back to the original direction it had been facing, somehow sensing that the greatest threat was about to come. It managed to lift only one of its arms in front of its chest when a black arrow flew through the slowly dispersing smoke, as fast as a bolt of lightning.

As the beast triumphantly realised that it had managed to somehow lift its arm on time to take the brunt of the incoming attack, confident in its unparalleled defensive capabilities, it looked down in horror as the human projectile drilled through its forearm before it could make another sound, not stopping until it had blasted completely through its chest and emerging from its huge back.

The Abyss Bear attempted to turn its head to look one last time at the weak looking girl who had just devastated its torso beyond rescue but it was too late. Its eyes rolled back until all you could see were the whites, and its knees buckled as its massive frame crumpled to the floor.

Behind the fresh corpse, Ning'Er was down on one knee, panting in exhaustion, with stripes of black lightning snakes still writhing around her body, causing her to spasm over and over in agony.

"Unggggghhhh…" she exclaimed as she struggled to control the insidious, twisting black energy from her final cricket bomb.

"Ning'Er, are you all right?!!" Ye Yan's voice sounded anxiously in her mind. He was still stunned at the series of decisions he had seen this young girl do in the matter of a few moments. She was completely ruthless to her opponent…and to herself.

She had crazily decided to directly use the immensely volatile energy from the cricket bomb to power the Thunder God's Meteorite Sword, using her own soul force and formidable mental focus to keep it under control. He had no idea how she had managed to do it.

Then, without any hesitation, she had used the Winged Lightning clone technique she had gained from the blood essence of the Winged Lightning Dragon to distract her enemy, and she had also slapped a Flight Talisman on her body, activating it to ensure that she could reach maximum speed in the shortest amount of time.

The final step in the process which barely took a few seconds was to activate the other ability from the essence blood, power amplification, which exponentially increased her strength but which would now leave her extremely weak.

Although this was counter-intuitive since she knew she wanted to help her friends after, at least she could control the situation better with her enemy down for the count. She quickly sat down cross-legged and swallowed a Nine Transformation Pill.

As the cool feeling of healing energy coursed through her body, she started breathing in the unique pattern of the Purifying Art of Sacred Lightning to purge out the remaining black lightning, which continued to rampage through her.

Her friends would need to hold on for a little while more so that she could try to recover to a level where she could support them. Fortunately, her battle had merely lasted two exchanges and had been extremely fast.

…..

The Snow Wind Spiritual Worm's expression suddenly changed from one of confidence to a nervous fear, as its five bodies trembled at the baleful aura that the black spear in the hands of their enemy was emanating.

On a base instinctual level, it could sense that this spear was the bane to its existence. Without thinking twice, all five clones ran away in separate directions immediately.

The Silver Flash was expecting this and had already started moving to cut off one of the bodies before it had even begun moving. In human form, he knew he wouldn't be able to catch up to the demon beast in pure speed if he didn't anticipate the next steps but even so, the clone he was intercepting managed to burst past him.

Sending the blood-thirst in the spear grow frantic as its prey threatened to escape, he let out a scream of pent-up rage that had been building from his contact with the aura of the weapon, and threw it with unbelievable force towards the escaping Spiritual Worm.

The Black Spear seemed to disappear for a moment and reappear in the middle of the body of demon beast. There was a strange shriek coming from the insect beast but the most puzzling thing was when the Silver Flash looked around, he could see that the other four clones of the demon beast had also fallen to the ground, writhing in apparent agony!

The spear glowed with an ominous black light as it joyfully drained the life force from its unfortunate victim. Somehow, the clones had a connection with each other which the weapon could use as a medium to draw the life force from, and although this demon beast was good at running away, there was no escaping this.

Within a few minutes, all five clones had shrunk to unrecognisable, shriveled grey corpses. A Legend Ranked demon beast had been consumed like delicious roast pork, just like that!

The Black Spear lay on the ground next to the body of the beast which had become its nutrition. The menacing weapon called out for the Silver Flash to come and reclaim it, and for many long moments, he wondered if he should ever come close to it again.

However, remembering that it had just helped him to win an incredibly challenging battle for which he had no other way of defeating the demon beast, he tentatively walked over and carefully picked it up.

For a short instant, he panicked as he felt the pull of the weapon's hunger on his life force, but it was gone again in the next moment. He could almost feel the spear chuckling to itself at scaring its owner. He shook his head as he placed it back into his interspatial ring, uncertain whether he would ever use it again.